Transcript of "Nasa"

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HISTORY OF NASA சநதனAn Act to provide for research into the problems of flightwithin and outside the Earths atmosphere, and for otherpurposes." With this simple preamble, the Congress and thePresident of the United States created the nationalAeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October1, 1958. NASAs birth was directly related to the pressuresof national defense. After World War II, the United Statesand the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War, abroad contest over the ideologies and allegiances of thenonaligned nations. During this period, space explorationemerged as a major area of contest and became known asthe space race. During the late 1940s, the Department ofDefense pursued research and rocketry and upperatmospheric sciences as a means of assuring Americanleadership in technology. A major step forward came whenPresident Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit ascientific satellite as part of the International GeophysicalYear (IGY) for the period, July 1, 1957 to December 31,1958, a cooperative effort to gather scientific data about theEarth. The Soviet Union quickly followed suit, announcingplans to orbit its own satellite.The Naval Research Laboratorys Project Vanguard waschosen on 9 September 1955 to support the IGY effort,largely because it did not interfere with high-priorityballistic missile development programs. It used the non-military Viking rocket as its basis while an Army proposalto use the Redstone ballistic missile as the launch vehicle 1

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waited in the wings. Project Vanguard enjoyed exceptionalpublicity throughout the second half of 1955, and all of1956, but the technological demands upon the programwere too great and the funding levels too small to ensuresuccess.A full-scale crisis resulted on October 4, 1957 when theSoviets launched Sputnik 1, the worlds first artificialsatellite as its IGY entry. This had a "Pearl Harbor" effecton American public opinion, creating an illusion of atechnological gap and provided the impetus for increasedspending for aerospace endeavors, technical and scientificeducational programs, and the chartering of new federalagencies to manage air and space research anddevelopment.More immediately, the United States launched its firstEarth satellite on January 31, 1958, when Explorer 1documented the existence of radiation zones encircling theEarth. Shaped by the Earths magnetic field, what came tobe called the Van Allen Radiation Belt, these zonespartially dictate the electrical charges in the atmosphere andthe solar radiation that reaches Earth. The U.S. also began aseries of scientific missions to the MooA direct result of theSputnik crisis, NASA began operations on October 1, 1958,absorbing into itself the earlier National AdvisoryCommittee for Aeronautics intact: its 8,000 employees, anannual budget of $100 million, three major researchlaboratories-Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, AmesAeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight PropulsionLaboratory-and two smaller test facilities. It quickly 2

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incorporated other organizations into the new agency,notably the space science group of the Naval ResearchLaboratory in Maryland, the Jet Propulsion Laboratorymanaged by the California Institute of Technology for theArmy, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency inHuntsville, Alabama, where Wernher von Brauns team ofengineers were engaged in the development of largerockets. Eventually NASA created other Centers and todayit has ten located around the country.NASA began to conduct space missions within months ofits creation, and during its first twenty years NASAconducted several major programs: • Human space flight initiatives-Mercurys single astronaut program (flights during 1961-1963) to ascertain if a human could survive in space; Project Gemini (flights during 1965-1966) with two astronauts to practice space operations, especially rendezvous and docking of spacecraft and extravehicular activity (EVA); and Project Apollo (flights during 1968-1972) to explore the Moon. • Robotic missions to the Moon Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter), Venus (Pioneer Venus), Mars (Mariner 4, Viking 1 and 2), and the outer planets (Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2). • Aeronautics research to enhance air transport safety, reliability, efficiency, and speed (X-15 hypersonic flight, lifting body flight research, avionics and electronics studies, propulsion technologies, structures research, aerodynamics investigations). 3

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• Remote-sensing Earth satellites for information gathering (Landsat satellites for environmental monitoring). • Applications satellites for communications (Echo 1, TIROS, and Telstra) and weather monitoring. • An orbital workshop for astronauts, Skylab. • A reusable spacecraft for traveling to and from Earth orbit, the Space Shuttle.Early Spaceflights: Mercury and GeminiNASAs first high-profile program involving humanspaceflight was Project Mercury, an effort to learn ifhumans could survive the rigors of spaceflight. On May 5,1961, Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American to flyinto space, when he rode his Mercury capsule on a 15-minute suborbital mission. John H. Glenn Jr. became thefirst U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962.With six flights, Project Mercury achieved its goal ofputting piloted spacecraft into Earth orbit and retrieving theastronauts safely.Project Gemini built on Mercurys achievements andextended NASAs human spaceflight program to spacecraftbuilt for two astronauts. Geminis 10 flights also providedNASA scientists and engineers with more data onweightlessness, perfected reentry and splashdownprocedures, and demonstrated rendezvous and docking inspace. One of the highlights of the program occurred duringGemini 4, on June 3, 1965, when Edward H. White, Jr.,became the first U.S. astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. 4

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n and planets in the latter 1950s and early 1960s.Going to the Moon - Project ApolloThe singular achievement of NASA during its early yearsinvolved the human exploration of the Moon, ProjectApollo. Apollo became a NASA priority on May 25 1961,when President John F. Kennedy announced "I believe thatthis nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moonand returning him safely to Earth." A direct response toSoviet successes in space, Kennedy used Apollo as a high-profile effort for the U.S. to demonstrate to the world itsscientific and technological superiority over its cold waradversary.In response to the Kennedy decision, NASA was consumedwith carrying out Project Apollo and spent the next 11years doing so. This effort required significantexpenditures, costing $25.4 billion over the life of theprogram, to make it a reality. Only the building of the 5

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Panama Canal rivaled the size of the Apollo program as thelargest nonmilitary technological endeavor ever undertakenby the United States; only the Manhattan Project wascomparable in a wartime setting. Although there weremajor challenges and some failures - notably a January 27,1967 fire in an Apollo capsule on the ground that took thelives of astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Virgil "Gus"Grissom, and Edward H. White Jr. Jr. - the program movedforward inexorably.Less than two years later, in October 1968, NASA bouncedback with the successful Apollo 7 mission, which orbitedthe Earth and tested the redesigned Apollo commandmodule. The Apollo 8 mission, which orbited the Moon onDecember 24-25, 1968, when its crew read from the bookof Genesis, was another crucial accomplishment on the wayto the Moon."Thats one small step for [a] man, one giant leap formankind." Neil A. Armstrong uttered these famous wordson July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 mission fulfilledKennedys challenge by successfully landing Armstrongand Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr. on the Moon. Armstrongdramatically piloted the lunar module to the lunar surfacewith less than 30 seconds worth of fuel remaining. Aftertaking soil samples, photographs, and doing other tasks onthe Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin rendezvoused with theircolleague Michael Collins in lunar orbit for a safe voyageback to Earth.Five more successful lunar landing missions followed. TheApollo 13 mission of April 1970 attracted the publics 6

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attention when astronauts and ground crews had toimprovise to end the mission safely after an oxygen tankburst midway through the journey to the Moon. Althoughthis mission never landed on the Moon, it reinforced thenotion that NASA had a remarkable ability to adapt to theunforeseen technical difficulties inherent in humanspaceflight.With the Apollo 17 mission of December 1972, NASAcompleted a successful engineering and scientific program.Fittingly, Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt, a geologist whoparticipated on this mission, was the first scientist to beselected as an astronaut. NASA learned a good deal aboutthe origins of the Moon, as well as how to support humansin outer space. In total, 12 astronauts walked on the Moonduring 6 Apollo lunar landing missions.In 1975, NASA cooperated with the Soviet Union toachieve the first international human spaceflight, theApollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). This projectsuccessfully tested joint rendezvous and dockingprocedures for spacecraft from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.After being launched separately from their respectivecountries, the Apollo and Soyuz crews met in space andconducted various experiments for two days. 7

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Space ShuttleAfter a gap of six years, NASA returned to humanspaceflight in 1981, with the advent of the Space Shuttle.The Shuttles first mission, STS-1, took off on April 12,1981, demonstrating that it could take off vertically andglide to an unpowered airplane-like landing. On STS-6,during April 4-9, 1983, F. Story Musgrave and Donald H.Peterson conducted the first Shuttle EVA, to test newspacesuits and work in the Shuttles cargo bay. Sally K.Ride became the first American woman to fly in spacewhen STS-7 lifted off on June 18, 1983, another earlymilestone of the Shuttle program.On January 28, 1986 a leak in the joints of one of two SolidRocket Boosters attached to the Challenger orbiter causedthe main liquid fuel tank to explode 73 seconds after 8

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launch, killing all 7 crew members. The Shuttle programwas grounded for over two years, while NASA and itscontractors worked to redesign the Solid Rocket Boostersand implement management reforms to increase safety. OnSeptember 29, 1988, the Shuttle successfully returned toflight and NASA then flew a total of 87 successfulmissions.Tragedy struck again on February 1, 2003, however. As theColumbia orbiter was returning to Earth on the STS-107mission, it disintegrated about 15 minutes before it was tohave landed. The Columbia Accident Investigation Boardwas quickly formed and determined that a small piece offoam had come off the External Tank and had struck theReinforced Carbon Carbon panels on the underside of theleft wing during launch on January 16. When the orbiterwas returning to Earth, the breach in the RCC panelsallowed hot gas to penetrate the orbiter, leading to acatastrophic failure and the loss of seven crewmembers.NASA is poised to return to flight again in summer 2005with the STS-114 mission. There are three Shuttle orbitersin NASAs fleet: Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour.Toward a Permanent Human Presence in SpaceThe core mission of any future space exploration will behumanitys departure from Earth orbit and journeying to theMoon or Mars, this time for extended and perhapspermanent stays. A dream for centuries, active efforts todevelop both the technology and the scientific knowledgenecessary to carry this off are now well underway. 9

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An initial effort in this area was NASAs Skylab program in1973. After Apollo, NASA used its huge Saturn rockets tolaunch a relatively small orbital space workshop. Therewere three human Skylab missions, with the crews stayingaboard the orbital workshop for 28, 59, and then 84 days.The first crew manually fixed a broken meteoroid shield,demonstrating that humans could successfully work inspace. The Skylab program also served as a successfulexperiment in long-duration human spaceflight.In 1984, Congress authorized NASA to build a major newspace station as a base for further exploration of space. By1986, the design depicted a complex, large, andmultipurpose facility. In 1991, after much debate over thestations purpose and budget, NASA released plans for arestructured facility called Space Station Freedom. Anotherredesign took place after the Clinton administration tookoffice in 1993 and the facility became known as SpaceStation Alpha.Then Russia, which had many years of experience in long-duration human spaceflight, such as with its Salyut and Mirspace stations, joined with the U.S. and other internationalpartners in 1993 to build a joint facility that became knownformally as the International Space Station (ISS). Toprepare for building the ISS starting in late 1998, NASAparticipated in a series of Shuttle missions to Mir and sevenAmerican astronauts lived aboard Mir for extended stays.Permanent habitation of the ISS began with the launch ofthe Expedition One crew on October 31 and the docking onNovember 2, 2000. 10

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On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush visitedNASA Headquarters and announced a new Vision forSpace Exploration. This Vision entails sending humansback to the Moon and on to Mars by eventually retiring theShuttle and developing a new, multipurpose CrewExploration Vehicle. Robotic scientific exploration andtechnology development is also folded into thisencompassing Vision.The Science of SpaceIn addition to major human spaceflight programs, therehave been significant scientific probes that have exploredthe Moon, the planets, and other areas of our solar system.In particular, the 1970s heralded the advent of a newgeneration of scientific spacecraft. Two similar spacecraft,Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, launched on March 2, 1972 andApril 5, 1973, respectively, traveled to Jupiter and Saturn tostudy the composition of interplanetary space. Voyagers 1and 2, launched on September 5, 1977 and August 20,1977, respectively, conducted a "Grand Tour" of our solarsystem. 11

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In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched intoorbit around the Earth. Unfortunately, NASA scientistssoon discovered that a microscopic spherical aberration inthe polishing of the Hubbles mirror significantly limitedthe instruments observing power. During a previouslyscheduled servicing mission in December, 1993, a team ofastronauts performed a dramatic series of spacewalks toinstall a corrective optics package and other hardware. Thehardware functioned like a contact lens and the elegantsolution worked perfectly to restore Hubbles capabilities.The servicing mission again demonstrated the uniqueability of humans to work in space, enabled Hubble tomake a number of important astronomical discoveries, andgreatly restored public confidence in NASA.Several months before this first HST servicing mission,however, NASA suffered another major disappointmentwhen the Mars Observer spacecraft disappeared on August21, 1993, just three days before it was to go into orbitaround the red planet. In response, NASA begandeveloping a series of "better, faster, cheaper" spacecraft togo to Mars.Mars Global Surveyor was the first of these spacecraft; itwas launched on November 7, 1996, and has been in aMartian orbit mapping Mars since 1998. Using someinnovative technologies, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraftlanded on Mars on July 4, 1997 and explored the surface ofthe planet with its miniature rover, Sojourner. The MarsPathfinder mission was a scientific and popular success,with the world following along via the Internet. This 12

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success was followed by the landing of the Spirit andOpportunity rovers in January 2004, to much scientific andpopular acclaim.Over the years, NASA has continued to look for lifebeyond our planet. In 1975, NASA launched the twoViking spacecraft to look for basic signs of life on Mars;the spacecraft arrived on Mars in 1976 but did not find anyindications of past or present biological activity there. In1996 a probe from the Galileo spacecraft that wasexamining Jupiter and its moon, Europa, revealed thatEuropa may contain ice or even liquid water, thought to bea key component in any life-sustaining environment.NASA also has used radio astronomy to scan the heavensfor potential signals from extraterrestrial intelligent life. Itcontinues to investigate whether any Martian meteoritescontain microbiological organisms and in the late 1990s,organized an "Origins" program to search for life usingpowerful new telescopes and biological techniques. Morerecently scientists have found more and more evidence thatwater used to be present on Mars. 13

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The "First A in NASA:" Aeronautics ResearchBuilding on its roots in the National Advisory Committeefor Aeronautics, NASA has continued to conduct manytypes of cutting-edge aeronautics research onaerodynamics, wind shear, and other important topics usingwind tunnels, flight testing, and computer simulations. Inthe 1960s, NASAs highly successful X-15 programinvolved a rocket-powered airplane that flew above theatmosphere and then glided back to Earth unpowered. TheX-15 pilots helped researchers gain much usefulinformation about supersonic aeronautics and the programalso provided data for development of the Space Shuttle.NASA also cooperated with the Air Force in the 1960s onthe X-20 Dyna-Soar program, which was designed to fly 14

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into orbit. The Dyna-Soar was a precursor to later similarefforts such as the National Aerospace Plane, on whichNASA and other Government agencies and privatecompanies did advanced hypersonics research in such areasas structures, materials, propulsion, and aerodynamics.NASA has also done significant research on flightmaneuverability on high speed aircraft that is oftenapplicable to lower speed airplanes. NASA scientistRichard Whitcomb invented the "supercritical wing" thatwas specially shaped to delay and lessen the impact ofshock waves on transonic military aircraft and had asignificant impact on civil aircraft design. Beginning in1972, the watershed F-8 digital-fly-by-wire (DFBW)program laid the groundwork for electronic DFBW flight invarious later aircraft such as the F/A-18, the Boeing 777,and the Space Shuttle. More sophisticated DFBW systemswere used on the X-29 and X-31 aircraft, which wouldhave been uncontrollable otherwise. From 1963 to 1975,NASA conducted a research program on "lifting bodies,"aircraft without wings. This valuable research paved theway for the Shuttle to glide to a safe unpowered landing, aswell as for the later X-33 project, and for a prototype for afuture crew return vehicle from the International SpaceStation.In 2004, the X-43A airplane used innovative scramjettechnology to fly at ten times the speed of sound, setting aworlds record for air-breathing aircraft. 15

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5Applications SatellitesNASA did pioneering work in space applications such ascommunications satellites in the 1960s. The Echo, Telstar,Relay, and Syncom satellites were built by NASA or by theprivate sector based on significant NASA advances.In the 1970s, NASAs Landsat program literally changedthe way we look at our planet Earth. The first three Landsatsatellites, launched in 1972, 1975, and 1978, transmittedback to Earth complex data streams that could be convertedinto colored pictures. Landsat data has been used in avariety of practical commercial applications such as cropmanagement and fault line detection, and to track manykinds of weather such as droughts, forest fires, and icefloes. NASA has been involved in a variety of other Earthscience efforts such as the Earth Observation System ofspacecraft and data processing that have yielded importantscientific results in such areas as tropical deforestation,global warming, and climate change.Conclusion 16

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Since its inception in 1958, NASA has accomplished manygreat scientific and technological feats. NASA technologyhas been adapted for many non-aerospace uses by theprivate sector. NASA remains a leading force in scientificresearch and in stimulating public interest in aerospaceexploration, as well as science and technology in general.Perhaps more importantly, our exploration of space hastaught us to view the Earth, ourselves, and the universe in anew way. While the tremendous technical and scientificaccomplishments of NASA demonstrate vividly thathumans can achieve previously inconceivable feats, we alsoare humbled by the realization that Earth is just a tiny "bluemarble" in the cosmos.Captions1. Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr. descends from the Apollo 11Lunar Module to become the second human to walk on theMoon. Neil A. Armstrong, who took this photograph, wasthe commander of the mission and the first to walk on thelunar surface.2. This rare view of two Space Shuttle orbiterssimultaneously on launch pads at the Kennedy Space centerwas taken on September 5, 1990. The Orbiter Columbia isshown in the foreground on pad 39A, where it was beingprepared for a launch (STS-35) the next morning. Thislaunch ended up being delayed until December 1990. In thebackground, the orbiter Discovery sits on pad 39B inpreparation for an October liftoff on STS-41. 17

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3. The Sojourner rover and undeployed ramps aboard theMars Pathfinder spacecraft are shown shortly after landingon the Martian surface on July 4, 1997. Partially deflatedairbags are also clearly visible.4. The rocket-powered X-15 aircraft set a number ofaltitude and speed records. Its flights during the 1960s alsoprovided engineers and scientists with much useful data forthe Space Shuttle program.5. This dramatic view of Earth was taken by the crew ofApollo 17. The Apollo program put into perspective formany people just how small and fragile our planet is. Overits forty-year existence, NASA has been involved in manymeteorological and Earth science missions that help usbetter understand our Earth. BY MNB CHARI 18